A satirical website has accidentally broken a real news story – by revealing that America offered Israel “a nice, big shipment” of weapons to try and salve its anger at the Iran nuclear deal.

A spoof news story on The Onion, headlined “US Soothes Upset Netanyahu With Shipment Of Ballistic Missiles”, appeared 24 hours before reports emerged that this had actually happened in real life.

Israeli newspaper Haaretz noted the similarity to its own story, published the following day, which carried the headline, “After Iran deal, Obama offers military upgrade to help Israel swallow bitter Iranian deal”.

Steven Salaita, the prof purged from UI Urbana-Champaign for his tweets, was on DN! today with his attorney, Maria LaHood, senior staff attorney at the Center for Constitutional Rights.

A new report by the nonprofit Palestine Legal and the Center for Constitutional Rights has documented hundreds of cases of Palestinian rights activists in the United States being harassed, disciplined, fired, sued, censored or threatened for their advocacy around Palestine. Eighty-five percent of these cases targeted students or scholars.

STEVEN SALAITA: So, over the summer, there was an entire sort of Freedom of Information Act dump of emails that led to, I guess, an intensification of the scandalization of the situation. It led to the resignation of Chancellor Wise and then the—her second-in-command, the provost. And what we—

AMY GOODMAN: And explain what happened.

STEVEN SALAITA: The emails that were released sort of pointed to a wide range of interests sort of converging around the issue of my Twitter feed, which I find both amusing and mortifying simultaneously. And there was donor pressure, and there was a conscious effort to circumvent the open records laws, but also a conscious effort to undermine all of the normal processes of faculty governance.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: There were allegations that the chancellor and others at the school were using private email accounts to avoid having their conversations about you and the reaction to you accessible through public information requests?

AMY GOODMAN: Hmmm, this is sounding presidential.

STEVEN SALAITA: Yes, exactly. And then they actually said, in writing, you know, "I’m deleting the emails as I send them."

AMY GOODMAN: And so, the chancellor was forced to resign. And explain who else. The board also changed?

STEVEN SALAITA: No, nobody from the board has resigned. The former chairman of the Board of Trustees, Christopher Kennedy, he rotated off.

AMY GOODMAN: Christopher Kennedy, Robert Kennedy's son?

STEVEN SALAITA: That’s correct, yes. He was the chairman of the board that presided over, I guess, my termination last August, but he has rotated off. So, the chancellor is gone, and the provost is gone, but the board remains intact.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Maria LaHood, the status of the lawsuit and the grounds upon which you are pursuing legal action against the university?

MARIA LAHOOD: Professor Salaita’s case against the university is for his breach of contract as well as violations of his First Amendment rights and his due process rights. And the university attempted to dismiss it, claiming there was no contract, claiming he had—you know, his tweets weren’t protected. And the court rejected that, saying, "Of course there was a contract. If there wasn’t, the academic hiring process as we know it would fail to—would cease to exist." And, of course, his tweets are protected by the First Amendment. They implicate every central concern. They, you know, are in the public interest. They were in a public forum. And, you know, the university acknowledges that it was the tweets, were the reason for his termination.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: I wanted to ask you about the firestorm this has created in academic circles. The American Association of University Professors obviously has come out in support of you. But there was a particular professor at University of Illinois, Cary Nelson, who was a former leader of the AUP, who has—who basically has supported the university, even though he himself in the past had supported Ward Churchill after Ward Churchill was fired by the University of Colorado, has supported Norman Finkelstein when Norman has been gone after, in terms of tenure situations by other universities. Your response to Professor Nelson’s stance?

STEVEN SALAITA: I think it’s a fantastic example of what a blind ideological commitment to Israel will lead one into. And so, he made a choice between the preservation of academic freedom and the preservation of Israel’s reputation, and he chose the latter. It’s no more complicated than that.

Andrew. wrote:Steven Salaita, the prof purged from UI Urbana-Champaign for his tweets, was on DN! today with his attorney, Maria LaHood, senior staff attorney at the Center for Constitutional Rights.

A new report by the nonprofit Palestine Legal and the Center for Constitutional Rights has documented hundreds of cases of Palestinian rights activists in the United States being harassed, disciplined, fired, sued, censored or threatened for their advocacy around Palestine. Eighty-five percent of these cases targeted students or scholars.

STEVEN SALAITA: So, over the summer, there was an entire sort of Freedom of Information Act dump of emails that led to, I guess, an intensification of the scandalization of the situation. It led to the resignation of Chancellor Wise and then the—her second-in-command, the provost. And what we—

AMY GOODMAN: And explain what happened.

STEVEN SALAITA: The emails that were released sort of pointed to a wide range of interests sort of converging around the issue of my Twitter feed, which I find both amusing and mortifying simultaneously. And there was donor pressure, and there was a conscious effort to circumvent the open records laws, but also a conscious effort to undermine all of the normal processes of faculty governance.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: There were allegations that the chancellor and others at the school were using private email accounts to avoid having their conversations about you and the reaction to you accessible through public information requests?

AMY GOODMAN: Hmmm, this is sounding presidential.

STEVEN SALAITA: Yes, exactly. And then they actually said, in writing, you know, "I’m deleting the emails as I send them."

AMY GOODMAN: And so, the chancellor was forced to resign. And explain who else. The board also changed?

STEVEN SALAITA: No, nobody from the board has resigned. The former chairman of the Board of Trustees, Christopher Kennedy, he rotated off.

AMY GOODMAN: Christopher Kennedy, Robert Kennedy's son?

STEVEN SALAITA: That’s correct, yes. He was the chairman of the board that presided over, I guess, my termination last August, but he has rotated off. So, the chancellor is gone, and the provost is gone, but the board remains intact.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Maria LaHood, the status of the lawsuit and the grounds upon which you are pursuing legal action against the university?

MARIA LAHOOD: Professor Salaita’s case against the university is for his breach of contract as well as violations of his First Amendment rights and his due process rights. And the university attempted to dismiss it, claiming there was no contract, claiming he had—you know, his tweets weren’t protected. And the court rejected that, saying, "Of course there was a contract. If there wasn’t, the academic hiring process as we know it would fail to—would cease to exist." And, of course, his tweets are protected by the First Amendment. They implicate every central concern. They, you know, are in the public interest. They were in a public forum. And, you know, the university acknowledges that it was the tweets, were the reason for his termination.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: I wanted to ask you about the firestorm this has created in academic circles. The American Association of University Professors obviously has come out in support of you. But there was a particular professor at University of Illinois, Cary Nelson, who was a former leader of the AUP, who has—who basically has supported the university, even though he himself in the past had supported Ward Churchill after Ward Churchill was fired by the University of Colorado, has supported Norman Finkelstein when Norman has been gone after, in terms of tenure situations by other universities. Your response to Professor Nelson’s stance?

STEVEN SALAITA: I think it’s a fantastic example of what a blind ideological commitment to Israel will lead one into. And so, he made a choice between the preservation of academic freedom and the preservation of Israel’s reputation, and he chose the latter. It’s no more complicated than that.

Another mark against any moral high ground the project of protecting Israel from critical review may wish to claim, and another saddening sign that many state institutions have been put under the thumb of political, corporatized influences that, regardless of overt political affiliations and monikers, slides further to the right with each head turn.

Israel has a right to exist, and the Jewish people definitely deserve somewhere to live in peace, but all in all, I can't see it as anything but Crap. I know it's because their holy land is there, but was it really worth all the wars and pain?

My mother, who defends Israel to the core, also refuses to acknowledge the fact that we are living on stolen land, and thinks she can because she has one Aboriginal friend.

I'm just trying to be a better person. My name is Brock.

sulfur)addict wrote:My love for the Stooges is a complex and nuanced thing, like the female orgasm, or running Diablo 2 on Windows 7.

As much as it makes me uncomfortable voting "CRAP" on a country whose people I don't directly know and whose actual "on-the-ground" situation I have no way of being familiar with, the whole "Protective Edge", "trimming the grass" thing and landslide Bibi victory have tipped my scales way on that direction. Besides the whole premise behind Israel smacks of racism to me. OK, I don't deny that the jewish people suffered abjectly during the Holocaust...but so did scores of aboriginal american and african peoples during the colonial era. Where are THEIR UN-endowed, NATO-bolstered "holy lands"? I'm sure if you go digging in THEIR traditional holy books/oral histories you'll find some similar nonsense about divinely bestowed motherlands, too ("nonsense" because I'm an atheist, and if you're going to use your fairy tales as an excuse for warmongering I'm gonna be an asshole about it, too).

EDIT: I just wanna add, I'm not denying Israel's right to exist. It's good that a persecuted people got the chance to live in...well "peace" is certainly a relative term here. It's just, I mean if the "western world" or whatever went against the tide of colonial/imperial history to do so to the point that they were/are willing to start a massive, MASSIVE, neverending shitstorm (the middle east is like our planet's equivalent to that big red spot in Jupiter, it will never be at peace so long as the current consensus on Israel is held up by force) and they can't even let freaking Chiapas, Guatemala, Bolivia etc be ruled by their indigenous populations without crying like a little bitch (IE waging dirty contra wars) about it...it really does look a bit suspect now doesn't it?

rawketlawnchair wrote:Frankly, racism is always going to be a thing, even if we change the language and pretend it's not about race. That's how people work. And that's why ethnostates work. Reals > feels.

Yeah, we're all racist now. And there's different types. You've got the comedy racists, the ironic racists, and the plain old douchebag racists. Which type are you?

eliya wrote:Did you guys ever hear of GG Allin? He used to shove a mic up his butt!

The academic group representing American anthropologists voted by an overwhelming 1,040-to-138 margin on Friday night to approve a proposed boycott of Israeli academic institutions.The measure, which bans collaborations between the association and Israeli universities, will now go on to the group’s full 10,000-strong membership for an electronic vote in coming months.“By supporting the boycott, anthropologists are taking a stand for justice through action in solidarity with Palestinians,” the pro=BDS group Anthropologists for the Boycott of Israeli Academic Institutions said in a statement after the vote.

A related measure to block the boycott vote was defeated by a similarly wide margin, with 1,173 voting against and 196 in favor.

Supporters of BDS predicted the full membership will enact the measure.

Anthony Flack wrote:Israel can GET FUCKED. They think they can impose fines on OUR citizens for exercising their right to free speech in our own country?

GET FUCKED. I can only hope the New Zealand courts deliver the legalese equivalent of GET FUCKED.

Agreed. I'm not from New Zealand, but I read about them trying to fine two women who urged a boycott of Lorde's (now cancelled) gigs in Tel Aviv. I share your hope that the NZ legal system tells them where to stick it. Reminds me of when two folk from the North korean embassy visited a hairdresser in north London and tried to make them take down a picture of Kim Jong-Un that was clearly put there to mock his hairstyle. The difference, of course, is that no-one took their threats of retribution remotely seriously.

Ten years on my vote is changing from Not Crap with waffles to Crap with waffles.

Any colonial country is teetering on crap but Bibi is a fucking monster.

clocker bob may 30, 2006 wrote:I think the possibility of interbreeding between an earthly species and an extraterrestrial species is as believable as any other explanation for the existence of George W. Bush.